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anxiety or depression scores (Mataix-Cols et al 2008). This could suggest that heightened disgust sensitivity may be a risk factor for the development of clinically significant contamination fears as well as other disgust-related anxiety disorders. However, other sources of evidence challenge this interpretation, including the possible confound of shared item content between measures of disgust and measures of contamination-related OCD and the fact that disgust sensitivity may decrease with successful treatment.

Contains fulltext : 133710.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Reward cues have been found to increase the investment of effort in tasks even when cues are presented suboptimally (i.e. very briefly), making them hard to consciously detect. Such effort responses to suboptimal reward cues are assumed to rely mainly on the mesolimbic dopamine system, including the ventral striatum. To provide further support for this assumption, we performed two studies investigating whether these effort responses vary with individual differences in markers of striatal dopaminergic functioning. Study 1 investigated the relation between physical effort responses and resting state eye-blink rate. Study 2 examined cognitive effort responses in relation to individually averaged error-related negativity. In both studies effort responses correlated with the markers only for suboptimal, but not for optimal reward cues. These findings provide further support for the idea that effort responses to suboptimal reward cues are mainly linked to the mesolimbic dopamine system, while responses to optimal reward cues also depend on higher-level cortical functions. 12 p.